


Clair de Lune

by abrightgrayworld



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: AU from Origins, F/M, Gen, but so fun to write!, mlsecretsanta2016, some canon things tweaked a bit, this is 3.5k words and it got away from me holyyyyy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-11 22:51:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9038438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abrightgrayworld/pseuds/abrightgrayworld
Summary: The moon has been a part of Adrien’s life for as long as he can remember.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is for atrickoflight on Tumblr and it's part of the Miraculous Ladybug Secret Santa 2016 exchange on Tumblr. :) I hope my recipient and everyone else enjoys this! I had a blast writing it.
> 
> Just a note that this is an AU from the Origins episodes that I've been working on for a long time. Aside from that AU aspect of it, some things in canon are tweaked in this fic to fit some of the ideas in this story (Adrien's windows, for example). 
> 
> Title means "moonlight" and was inspired by both the nursery rhyme and the piano piece by Debussy (see notes below for both). Translations for the French in the fic are also in the end notes.

 I.

The earliest memory he has of the moon is when he is five and in his mother’s arms.

He’s giggling loudly and avoiding all attempts to be coerced into sleep as his mother tries to button up his polka-dotted pajama shirt.

“Adrien, _mon cher_ ,” she laughs in exasperation, “You have to sleep. I’m taking you to the park tomorrow. You need to be well rested so that you can play.”

“Maman,” Adrien whines, pouting. “I don’t wanna! Can I just stay up for a little while longer?”

“You said that half an hour ago, Adrien. You have to sleep.” Adrien’s face falls and an unusually morose expression takes over his face. His mother catches it and frowns. “What’s the matter, sweetie?”

“I don’t like to sleep,” he mutters, crossing his little arms. “It’s too quiet and dark. I feel scared sometimes.”

His mother sighs in realization and pulls him closer into her lap, hugging him tightly. He closes his eyes and breathes in the rose fragrance of her hair.

“You know what to do when you’re scared, Adrien?” she whispers, reaching over and pushing aside the curtain to reveal a clear window. The sky is cloudless, and while the stars are blotted out by Paris’ lights, the moon is clear and bright. “Whenever you feel scared, just look up at the moon. It is always going to be there for you.”

Adrien follows his mother’s gaze, leaning into her warmth, and gazes at the moon. It gazes back, luminous and shimmering. Adrien feels a rush of content, looking at that serene white light.

“It’ll always be there for me,” he repeats softly, and the words feel like magic on his tongue.

“Exactly,” his mother says, and leans over to kiss his forehead. “And look at that; it’s shining into your room right now. Right on you and this bed. What do you think it’s trying to tell you?” She boops him on the nose, grinning at his giggles. “Now, will you go to sleep?”

“Yes, Maman,” he says and wriggles from his mother’s lap to stretch out on the bed. She smiles and pulls his favourite blanket over him - covered in little black cats in various poses – and tucks in the corners. Adrien sinks into the warmth of the blanket and waits for his favourite part of bedtime: his mother’s lullabies.

“I’ll sing you your favourite one tonight,” she says, and begins. It’s much slower and softer than the fun tone that Adrien usually hears with this song, and he thinks he likes it better this way.

 _Au clair de la lune,_  
Mon ami Pierrot,  
Prête-moi de plume  
Pour écrire un mot…

On and on the song goes until it’s done and Adrien’s hovering in that delicious area between wakefulness and slumber.

“ _Bonne nuit, Adrien,_ ” his mother whispers, and she runs her fingers through his hair again. “ _Tu es mon trésor._ ”

She tiptoes out of the room and closes the door, and the room is silent. For a split second, Adrien feels a sharp stab of fear, but then his eyes catch the moon, still shining, still bright.

Still there.

Adrien turns over, curls into himself, and falls asleep, and all night long, soft strains of song and beautiful shining moonlight drift throughout his dreams.

II.

When Adrien is eight, he begins to learn the piano.

He’s always been fascinated by the grand piano that he’s seen his father play whenever his busy schedule allows it. Whenever his father sits on the piano bench, Adrien is quick to jump onto it with him. His father always laughs and allows Adrien to sit under his arm. He tells Adrien about the piece he’s playing, pointing out notes and chords and arpeggios that sometimes go over Adrien’s head, but Adrien loves to listen and watch his father’s graceful hands fly over the keys.

One night, he finds it hard to sleep, so he gets up and pads out of his room, making sure to be as silent as possible so he won’t wake his parents down the hall.

The piano room looks much different at night than it does in the day. Adrien almost doesn’t recognize it; the room is illuminated by the moon, and the piano sits directly in the middle of it, looking grand and magical. Adrien slowly sits on the bench and opens the lid, running his small fingers delicately over the ivory keys.

He’s watched his father play, but he doesn’t think he’s ever actually tried it himself.

He slowly presses down on one of the higher keys. A ringing, melodic _plink_ sounds in the room, and Adrien falls in love with the sound. He presses another key, and then both the keys together, reflecting that they sound good together. He begins to try different combinations, even playing more than two notes at once when the notes are close enough for his small hands to reach. The notes shimmer in the air and the moonlight only seems to brighten, flooding warmth and joy into Adrien’s heart.

He’s so entranced that he doesn’t notice the figure walking towards him.

“Adrien,” comes his father’s voice. The boy’s hands come to a stop. “What are you doing, son?”

“Père!” Adrien whispers, turning around on the bench, his eyes alight with excitement. “I want to learn the piano! Can you teach me?”

His father’s eyes widen, a smile breaking out on his face. “I can arrange for a teacher.” He pauses, noting his son’s look of disappointment. “I’m very busy, Adrien. You know that. But how about I teach you a few things now? Not too many, because it’s late and your Maman will be angry at both of us, but just a bit to get you started.”

Adrien grins again, nodding vigorously, and scoots over on the bench.

(Years later, after his mother has disappeared and his father becomes cold, Adrien will wonder why he started piano in the first place. And then he will remember that room in the middle of the night, sitting with his father’s arms around him and his fingers being gently guided over the keys, rays of moonlight enveloping them in warmth and love.

He will remember the moon illuminating the look of joy on his father’s face when he heard Adrien’s wish.

And he will swallow his protests and find that love for his instrument, if only for the hope of seeing that look on his father’s face again.)

III.

His mother is officially said to disappear when he is fourteen. Plagg finds him that same night.

He’s hiding up in his room, trying to block out the sounds of his father’s shouts at the policemen’s incompetence as they report their failure to find her. He’s unsuccessful in wiping away the tears dripping down his face. Maman has been missing for almost two weeks now, and Adrien hasn’t felt so hopeless and so afraid in his entire life. He wants his father to come up and hug him close, but Père hasn’t said more than five words to him this whole time. Adrien doesn’t want to bother him, but he feels _so alone_.

It’s only late afternoon, but Adrien is exhausted and nearly sick with worry. He lies on his bed and closes his eyes, ignoring the tears that make their way down near his ears, and hopes that maybe when he wakes up, it will have all been a dream.

When he wakes up, it’s because he’s _freezing._ Night has fallen, the outer parts of his room shrouded in shadow. He looks toward the window and frowns—the window is open, and there’s a draft blowing in. He doesn’t think he opened it—but then again, his head feels muggy and is pounding from all the crying he did earlier. He probably just did it on autopilot.

He closes it and is about to head back to bed to warm up when he notices the box on the window sill.

“What on earth?” he mutters, wondering how he missed it. It’s sitting there in the light of the moon, something making Adrien regard it closely, despite how innocuous it looks. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen it before; it’s distinctive with its hexagonal shape and its deep maroon colour. It’s light, too, like one of those boxes containing jewelry.

He examines it closely and, welcoming the tinge of curiosity he feels rather than the overpowering sadness of before, opens it.

He catches a glimpse of a silver ring before a burst of green light causes him to yelp and drop the box. He stumbles backwards as he sees something fly out of it—and it heads right towards him. He squeaks again, raising his hands in a paltry attempt to defend himself from…

A floating cat thing?

The thing floats up to Adrien’s eye level and squints at him. There’s a second where they’re both just staring at each other.

“Name’s Plagg. Do you have any Camembert?” the thing finally says. Adrien, absurdly, laughs. He’s surprised he still can.

As Plagg explains things around mouthfuls of stinky cheese, Adrien finds himself excited. He feels guilty for that because his mother’s still out there, but he’s going to take all the distractions he can get until she comes home. She _will_ come home any day now. He’s sure of it.

And in the meantime, he can be a superhero! He can just about imagine the look on his mother’s face when he shows her.

“Wanna go for a test run?” his kwami offers. Adrien nods and says, “Transformez-moi!” It’s the most exhilarating thing he’s ever done.

That night is the first of many that he vaults out of that window. Over the next couple of years, he will be pulled into a world of fighting and unprecedented freedom from the chains of his alter-ego’s life. Among the pain of his mother’s absence and his father’s retreat from his life, Adrien will learn to cherish those moments when he’s just a shadow on a rooftop, basking in the light of the moon, the whole of Paris laid out before his eyes. It gives him comfort in a way few things can.

IV.

He meets Ladybug a week after he gets his Miraculous. Adrien doesn’t believe in love at first sight, but he comes close to feeling it when he sees her.

It happens one night when he’s in a part of Paris that he doesn’t know that well. Even with the advantage of height, he has no idea where he is.

 _You’re lost, aren’t you,_ Plagg says in his head, his tone irritated and slightly anxious. _How do you even get lost in Paris? The Eiffel tower is basically a guide to everything!_

“It’s fine, Plagg. I’ll just keep looking around. You aren’t near your limit, are you?”

 _Not yet, but if we have to use Cataclysm because you get mugged or something, then we’ll be stranded. I doubt your dad will be happy to pick you up._ Plagg’s tone is even more anxious now, setting Chat’s nerves on edge, too.

“Send someone to pick me up, you mean?” he mutters. He vaults onto a taller building and scans the area. He moves closer to the Eiffel tower like Plagg mentioned, sheepish that he didn’t think of that. Thankfully, the moon seems to be directly in his line of sight, as if its beams are creating a path for him to tread, and he doesn’t struggle to see where he’s going.

“See, Plagg?” he crows. “I told you it’d be—” He cuts off with a gasp as he stumbles on the edge of a rooftop. He tries to get purchase with his staff but can’t and falls. Plagg is talking frantically in his head but he can’t really hear him against the wind roaring in his ears and the way his heart is jackhammering in his throat. He dimly starts to think that this is a crappy way to die when suddenly, something catches him by the wrist and stops his fall. He hangs in the air for a moment, suspended by whatever has caught him, and then he’s being propelled onto the rooftop, landing in a sprawl.

Chat struggles to catch his breath, ignoring the sting of concrete against his cheeks for the moment (though there’ll be hell to pay later if his model face is ruined). Plagg is berating him in his head, cursing and calling him rude things, and Chat feels a rush of affection for his kwami.

“Are you alright?” a voice asks, just as out of breath as he is. “I thought I wouldn’t catch you. You’re a superhero, too, aren’t you?”

Chat sits up and looks at his saviour, and his heart stops.

Framed by moonlight that makes her raven hair shine, a beautiful, masked, girl in a spotted leather suit stands before him, a yoyo in her right hand. Her eyes are a clear, deep blue, strong and kind. The expression on her face is one of surprise that is rapidly morphing into determined focus.

Chat tries to speak, but he finds that his words have been dried up. The girl seems to take this as a bad sign. “Are you okay?” she asks again.

Chat coughs. “I’m fine!” he says quickly. “Thank you for saving me…”

“Ladybug,” she tells him, a proud smile appearing on her lips. She looks _majestic,_ a fierceness about her that tells Chat that she can probably do anything.

“Ladybug,” he says. He stands up and bows, taking her hand and bringing it to his lips in a suave move that takes even him a little by surprise. All that anime he’s watched has really had an effect on him, apparently. “Chat Noir, at your service.” He can’t help the flash of pride he feels at saying the name, even though Plagg had mocked him for its lack of ingenuity.

Ladybug looks taken aback. She pulls her hand away and pushes him back by his nose. She seems to be blushing faintly. Chat’s quickly overtaken with shame—he made her uncomfortable!

“Sorry!” he blurts. “That was—I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry; I made you uncomfortable.”

“It’s fine,” she says, smiling a little but reverting back to her business-like tone. “You just surprised me. I think we should talk. My kwami said that we’re supposed to be partners.”

Chat tilts his head. “My kwami didn’t say anything about a partner.” _Thanks, Plagg_ , he adds silently in his head, only to be met with a mental scoff.

 _I was getting around to it. My style is to tell you things as they happen. Ladybug’s kwami is so unnecessarily proactive,_ Plagg says. He seems like he’s pouting, and Chat rolls his eyes.

 _More like her kwami isn’t as lazy as you,_ he thinks back, and Plagg doesn’t deign that with a response.

“Well, then,” Ladybug says. “We have things to discuss. Come on!” She twirls the yoyo and is off.

Chat lets out a startled laugh and watches her swing in the moonlight, his breath catching. Then, he shakes it off and follows her.

This superhero thing just got a whole lot better.

V.

They find out about each other in the worst way possible—without a choice, trapped together in a room with no hiding space and no time before their transformations release. It doesn’t go well.

Marinette’s jaw drops and Adrien gasps, loud.

They defeat the akuma as quickly as possible and flee without so much as a word to each other, trying to process things.

After that, Adrien doesn’t really talk to Marinette for a couple weeks. There are the akuma fights and their interactions at school, but during both, she doesn’t engage with him more than necessary, and neither does he.  Alya and Nino have both noticed the tension and constantly look at them with concern, not seeming to be convinced with excuses of fatigue or stress.

Adrien can hardly believe it. Marinette—hard-working, kind, passionate Marinette—is Ladybug, the love of his life.

Or maybe what he’s really finding strange is that _he didn’t notice it before._ Their hairstyles are the same, their voices, their confidence—and their smiles, so like his mother’s it makes his heart hurt.

How could he not have seen it? How is he still finding it difficult to reconcile both images of her?

He really didn’t mean to express his shock so loudly when he discovered who she was, and he has a feeling that his gasp may have been taken badly by her. He’s not sure, but he thinks he hurt her with his reaction. She looked so shocked and hurt.

He feels _awful_.

Be it Ladybug or Marinette, he misses her. He really, really misses her, and he doesn’t know how to fix this, or if there’s anything to fix. He honestly doesn’t know when they’ll speak again.

Which is why just before he leaps out of his window, suited up as Chat Noir for his night to patrol, he’s startled when his baton-phone rings. His heart leaps and he nearly stumbles, catching himself on the windowsill.

“ _Chaton_ ,” Ladybug—Marinette—says, her voice quiet and resolute. He can see her silhouette on the video, unable to make out much more in the darkness. “Come to our meeting place. We need to talk.”

Their meeting place—the first place they met, the rooftop where she saved him. It is symbolic—of what, Adrien can’t say, but it _is_. His stomach swoops in both elation and dread in equal parts; their talk could decide the course of their relationship.

Chat leaps out of his window and takes off over the rooftops, running as fast as he can by the light of the moon. His skin is thrumming and his heart is leaping. He has so many things to say to her, so many apologies he wants to make.

When he reaches the rooftop, he lands silently. Ladybug is sitting on the edge of the roof, her legs idly swinging. She’s looking at the moon, lost in thought, and she doesn’t seem to have heard him, which is unusual for her normally perceptive self.

“My Lady,” Chat says, and Ladybug tenses. Chat tries not to feel too hurt. “Marinette,” he says instead. “I’m sorry if I hurt you with my reaction. I just—I’m not disappointed at all! I’m really happy it’s you.”

“You are?” she says, turning to look at him.

He grins widely. “Yes! How could I not be? You’re Marinette—you’re amazingly talented and hard-working, and you’re such a good leader as class president, and there’s honestly no one I know who could fit Ladybug better. You’re amazing. I’m sorry if I made you think otherwise.”

Ladybug gives him a small smile and then there’s a flash of pink light as she de-transforms. Marinette walks over to him and after a hesitant pause, hugs him tightly. “I’m sorry, too. My reaction wasn’t great, either. It just…” She looks at him, eyes glimmering. “I think the thing was that I maybe knew, but I refused to believe that it could be possible.” She looks away, ashamed. “I know how you hate being put on a pedestal and I just…that’s what I was doing for so long, trying to separate Adrien and Chat Noir, and I was just so _awful_ for doing that. I’m so sorry, Adrien. I’m sorry, Chat. I was trying to deny that you could be both parts, have both sides to your personality, and I shouldn’t have done that.”

Chat de-transforms, too, and Adrien stands in front of Marinette, quiet. He can’t deny that her words hurt, but he can’t find it in himself to resent her. After all, he had put Ladybug on a pedestal, too. He had idealized her, waxed poetic about her abilities and her perfection—how can he blame Marinette when he probably caused her to doubt herself as the heart of Ladybug?

“I think we need to get to know each other better, Marinette,” he says. “As both of our alter-egos. Sooooooo,” he drawls, waggling his eyebrows, and Marinette laughs in surprise, wiping her eyes.

“Soooooo, what?” she echoes, stepping closer.

“So, we need to eat lunch together, have more video game tournaments, have sleepovers, and hang out as Ladybug and Chat Noir more often. I want to get to know you, Marinette. All of you.”

“I do, too, Adrien. So much,” she says softly. Her cheeks are flushed, and she’s bathed in moonlight, making her glow.

They both move into the hug together, holding on tightly. It feels wonderful. It feels right.

They have more to talk about, Adrien knows. They have to think about the new dangers that Hawkmoth may pose to them now. They need to talk about feelings, what they are to each other—as much as Adrien thinks that they’re just friends right now, based on how content and happy he feels, he gets the feeling that that conversation is coming fast. But for now, they can just be.

“Let’s sit for a bit. We can patrol a little later. It doesn’t look like there will be akumas tonight,” Marinette says. She transforms again, and Adrien takes the cue to do so as well. They sit on the rooftop again, quiet and contemplative, their shoulders brushing, warm against the cool night air.

In those quiet, still moments, Chat glances at his lady and takes in her peaceful expression, still awed at knowing who she is. He makes a silent, determined promise to himself and to her. By Ladybug’s side, by Marinette’s side, is where he is meant to be. And he’s going to do whatever it takes to make sure that’s where he’s going to remain.

**Author's Note:**

> Translations:
> 
> Mon cher - my dear  
> Bonne nuit - good night  
> Tu es mon trésor - you are my treasure
> 
> For those wondering about the song that Adrien's mom sings in the first part, it's a French nursery rhyme called [Au clair de la lune](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN38P4DypUo). Also, one of the pieces I listened to while writing this is called [Clair de Lune](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvFH_6DNRCY) by the composer Debussy, and it is absolutely gorgeous! <3
> 
> And that's that! Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
